The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is suggested by Kat:

I recently got new bookshelves for my room, and I’m just loving them. Spent the afternoon putting up my books and sharing it on my blog . One of my friends asked a question and I thought it would be a great BTT question. So from Tina & myself, we’d like to know “How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

I wasn’t going to answer this question originally because the answer that came to mind was only a couple of words. But reading Sally‘s and Janet‘s answers inspired me to elaborate.

The short answer is: by subject and genre. More or less.

We have four main bookcases, two in the family room and two in the sunroom. They used to all be together until we got furniture for the living room that was larger than what we’d had before, so we had to move two bookcases out. The ones in the family room are technically only half-bookshelves: the upper half has bookshelves with glass doors, the bottom half has shelves with solid doors which hold games, wedding and baby albums, and the boxes I keep for each of my children with special cards and keepsakes. (It sounds more organized than it is. The shelves with keepsakes are stuffed with such things that I squirrel away in there during a quick clean-up, but periodically I sort through and put the right items in the right boxes and make hard decisions about throwing some away (To my husband: I really do, honey, though it looks like I never throw anything away. 🙂 ) The books in the upper shelves are mainly Christian non-fiction. Some of my husband’s books, which are mainly on the subject of creationism and science, are in those bookcases as well.

The ones in the sunroom have six shelves each and four of those are double-stacked — they have two rows of books on them (you’d think a sunroom would have white walls, billowy curtains over open windows, wicker furniture, and plants everywhere. Not ours. 🙂 Ours has dark wood paneling and a hodgepodge of stuff that won’t fit in other rooms: two computer desks, bookshelves, treadmill, a table with assorted craft supplies on it, filing cabinets, tools, and boxes of my mother-in-law’s storage. The previous owners had a hot tub and exercise equipment in here.) Anyway, the bookshelves in here house my most-read books: biographies, classics, and fiction. I read a lot of Christian fiction but I don’t keep a lot of it: most of it used to be passed on to my mom before she died and is still passed on to my mother-in-law. I have one box set side for my sister. Some gets donated to thrift stores. I have a lot of “mom” books and organizational books, for some reason, spread out over two different bookcases (which I guess means I need to put some of the organizational ones to good use.) I also have a couple of shelves of craft books in here. If I ever get my sewing/craft room, hopefully I can move those there. One of the “double-stacked” rows is to-be-read books; another holds books I put away in a quick clean-up but need to move to their rightful spot (but usually there is no room left on the shelf where they would belong…)

Within each of those broad categories, books on like subject are grouped together.

I also have a small bookcase of cookbooks in the kitchen as well as a shelf of cookbooks on a baker’s rack. Each of my children has bookcases in their rooms, and we have boxes of children’s books in the attic (which I am really glad I kept in light of the CPSIA). I hope to have very bookish grandchildren to share them with some day. There are a few books on my nightstand and a few end tables and, of course, in the bathroom.

Once when I hinted to my husband that we needed more bookshelves, he said we needed to get rid of some books. 🙂 It’s true — there really is no space for more shelves. He once said he didn’t see the need to keep a book once it had been read, but he is very patient with my book collection. Believe or not, I have purged it a few times, and it is probably time to do so again, but I don’t want to do so hurriedly. Books are an investment, and it would cost more to replace them than to keep them, so I like to go through them carefully, making really sure I don’t think I’ll ever use a book again before parting with it. I admit I do keep some out of sentimentality. I almost tossed my college literature books out recently since most of their content can be easily found elsewhere, but when I paged through them and saw various notes and underlinings, I just couldn’t.

I once thought it would be nice to have a room designated officially as the library like you read about or see in films in old English manors, complete with the little rolling ladder (that I really don’t think I have the balance to actually use.) But I am not so sure I’d really like that. Books are some of my best friends, and it is nice to have a few close at hand in most of the rooms.

(Note: This is not a picture of my bookcases: this is a picture of a “dream library.”)